10 Most Useful Excel Tips – Part 2

Continuing our series of 1o most useful excel tips, today we are going to learn Flash Fill and Fill Formula/Values.

Let’s get started!

1. Flash Fill

2013 onwards, Excel developed a mind of its own where it started filling the information you otherwise would have typed in, automatically. For example, A column has ‘First Name’ and B column has ‘Last Name’ and in C column you want to join the both to have a full name. one way to do is use the concatenate function, OR you can use Excel’s flash fill logic. To use Flash-fill do the following:

• For the first record, just key in the First name and the last name separated by space in column c

• Hit enter

• Once you start typing the same for the second record, Excel will automatically suggest the entries for the rest of the records.

• To accept Excel’s suggestion simply press ‘Enter’

There you go! Excel has now populated full names for all the records.

To turn on the Flash fill option the shortcut is Ctrl + E.

2. Fill Formula/ Values

Excel comes very handily when applying the formulas across the file. Simply write a formula first record, move the mouse cursor to the bottom right of the cell and drag the black plus cursor till the cell you want to copy the formula. Double-clicking at this black plus cursor will automatically fill in the formula till the last used cell in the range.